These two sites have online Spanish games that kids can use to practice vocabulary related to different professions. The first is an online activity with images of tools used by different professions and scrambled words. Players simply unscramble the word and type it in the blank using capital letters and, of course, accents if needed. I like this game because it only show tools to represent the professions and not people. Students have to be [...]
Proble+ (pronounced proble-mas) are engaging online activities that combine Spanish reading comprehension and basic math skills from the Ministerio de Educación, Cultura y Deporte of Spain. These are perfect for Spanish language learners because the questions and activities are presented in a context that continually reinforces meaning. There are also graphics to give visual support to the words and printable follow-up activities. I think these are great activities for children learning Spanish! You will find [...]
Aula Editores is a Chilean company that publishes a series of magazines for teachers: Aula Creativa, Aula Infantil and Aula Herramientas. The magazines are not available in print in the U.S., but the publisher does make many printable Spanish materials available to download. Aula Infantil The first magazine, Aula Infantil is for teachers and parents of preschoolers. The printable Spanish material supports the articles and the activities in the magazine, so it is labeled by [...]
Poems for children in Spanish teach language and culture through rhythm, rhyme and images. Simple structures and familiar vocabulary make these three poems easy to use with language learners. The online magazine, Cuatrogatos, is dedicated to children’s literature in Spanish. It is based in Miami and is an excellent resource for poetry to use with kids. The archives have material going back to 2000. Both Edgar Allan García of Ecuador and Sergio Andricaín of Cuba [...]
I have used activities with comic strips in Spanish and ESL classes with lots of success. Kids love them, and comics lend themselves to all kinds of language activities. Many of you are already familiar with MakeBeliefsComix.com, but if you have not taken a look, the website has a wonderful tool for letting kids create comic strips online. The comics they make can be printed or emailed. The site also has printable blank templates where [...]
These online activities are provided by the Spanish publisher Editorial Teide as support for their textbooks. They are designed for children in Spain, but many of the activities are also appropriate for Spanish language learners. These activities for Primer Ciclo (6-8 years old) deal with basic concepts, vocabulary and language structures. Some of the games are very simple, for example, categorizing objects as duro or blando. Others, like Viviendas diferentes use more language and would [...]
This online game in Spanish teaches children about the five senses. La máquina de los sentidos is a game from Discovery Kids. It is designed to teach native Spanish speakers about taste, smell, sight, hearing and touch. It is an excellent game for Spanish language learners because – it has limited, focused vocabulary that is supported by images. – it is based on two question structures that are repeated over and over. – it has [...]
OnlineFreeSpanish has nine activities to teach farm animal vocabulary in Spanish. The games combine an image, the written word, and sound. These are not whole language activities; they focus on individual words. Teachers and parents can make the most of these games by building a context, using the words in sentences, and relating the words to each other. Like the other games on OnlineFreeSpanish, the farm animal activities include pronunciation. The words are pronounced normally, [...]
Stories from BookBox are a wonderful resource for building reading and listening skills in Spanish. BookBox creates animated books with Same Language Subtitling (SLS) to support reading and literacy development around the world. They have a great website with dozens of stories that can be viewed in different languages at no cost. The not-for-profit enterprise PlanetRead is the parent organization of BookBox. Through PlanetRead, BookBox gifts one hour of reading to a beginning reader for [...]
Whether your kids are beginning to learn Spanish this summer or keeping up on their skills during a break from Spanish class, these interactive websites are a great way to keep them engaged with Spanish text. These are sites that provide kids with lots of opportunity to read. Several of the sites have a variety of activities. I have tried to list the websites roughly in order of increasing difficulty. The first sites have material [...]
This online game is called Mi familia. It is excellent for beginners learning family and house vocabulary or as a review for kids who are already familiar with the words. The activities are simple, and there is a lot of clear Spanish audio. It is a set of exercises, so there is plenty of repetition. The activities use a limited set of vocabulary and that makes them perfect for beginners. The games are from Spain [...]
This traditional Spanish game, El juego de la oca, is a board game similar to Snakes and Ladders. Players roll dice and move in a spiral to reach the center of the board. If they land on la oca (the goose), they move ahead to the next oca and roll again, saying De oca a oca y tiro porque me toca. If they land on the bridge, they move to the next bridge and roll [...]